1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to configuration management. Specifically, the present invention provides a method, system and program product for tracking computer system configuration changes with corresponding message responses.
2. Related Art
Most middleware systems today provide administrative functions and user interfaces to allow system administrators to configure and manage development and production level systems. A key role of the administrators is to get the systems configured quickly and ensure that they remain operational and available on a nearly absolute 24/7 basis. System downtime for some businesses can be critical, resulting in millions of dollars of revenue lost per hour or even minutes. This puts enormous pressure on administrators to take appropriate but prudent actions when maintaining these systems. If a system does go down (catastrophic or otherwise), typically there is extensive causal analysis done to determine the failure points, often involving supervisory personnel of the administrators responsible. Administrators are held highly accountable for the actions they take (or do not take) in keeping their systems available.
To aid in problem prevention, most software systems provide mechanisms to administrators to warn of potential problems or error conditions. Such mechanisms typically come in the form of warning messages and informational messages. As autonomic computing advances, these warning systems will become increasingly advanced, all to the benefit of the administrators. However, if administrators fail to heed or act on the warnings or information, catastrophic failures can still occur. In some of these instances, supervisory personnel can check system logs to see what warning and information messages were issued. Unfortunately, no current system provides direct one-to-one tracking of the responses or follow-up actions by the administrators to the messages. This makes is extremely difficult for the supervisory personnel to determine why the failures were caused, who was responsible, and whether the failures were avoidable.